Tomato 8.5/10 |
12 (2007) |
"The stories the jurors tell, of course, are different ... filled with arguments that reference local tensions and situations possessing a distinctly Chekhovian flavor." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 4/10 |
Amelia (2009) |
"Swank's resemblance to Earhart is uncanny, but the result is verisimilitude without engagement %u2014 a risk-taker's story told entirely without narrative risk, and a movie that consequently never takes flight." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 3/10 |
An American Affair (2009) |
"If you can get past the exploitation-of-minors thing, there's a tawdry exuberance to moments like the one in which the twerp and his overage girlfriend drunkenly splash paint on each other." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 4/10 |
Angels & Demons (2009) |
"Presumably in response to criticism that The Da Vinci Code was static and talky, director Ron Howard has made Angels & Demons frantic %u2014 and, well, talky" |
Bob Mondello |
Splat |
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009) |
"There's little in this pointless rehash to distract audiences from the pleasure of watching Tamblyn, a fine young actress whose direct, grownup stare belies her baby features." |
Ella Taylor |
Tomato 5/10 |
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh (2009) |
"Grossman has a robust story to tell, and she's found remarkable World War II footage to help her tell it." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 4.5/10 |
The Blind Side (2009) |
"Director John Lee Hancock's only aiming for a crowd pleaser, and by not challenging the established playbook for inspirational sports dramas, he's no doubt got one." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 4/10 |
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) |
"The faux-naive point of view probably worked better in the novel; the literalness of film renders certain of the story's conceits ... overly precious." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 4/10 |
Breakfast with Scot (2008) |
"All the filmmakers are really after is a heartwarming little object lesson. ... [But] they perch their tidy little dramedy somewhere between sitcom and Movie of the Week." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 6.5/10 |
Brothers at War (2009) |
"Rademacher comes up with compellingly unfamiliar documentary footage. ... Firefights caught unvarnished and in the moment are harrowing because the cameraman himself is, well, harrowed." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 6.5/10 |
Bruno (2009) |
"When moments seem like setups with actors, they turn tame. But when things feel real -- as when Bruno conronts an Arkansas wrestling-match crowd -- they can get scary-real." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7.5/10 |
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009) |
"It's nice that the film brings some real-world crunch to the story - ethnic characters whose presence make a social point ... and a clear message about the downside of a society where food is overabundant." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8.5/10 |
Coraline (2009) |
"Selick puts his real faith not in the gimmickry that Coraline's audiences will think they've shown up for, but in the stronger virtues that they'd likely view as old-fashioned: character, and story, and so on." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 6/10 |
Defiance (2008) |
"It's an inspiring story, if one that doesn't need quite as much poetic inspiration as Ed Zwick's movie insists on giving it." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8/10 |
Departures (2009) |
"Multiplexes are crowded with noisy summer films, from which Departures will represent a sophisticated and elegant departure." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8/10 |
Disgrace (2009) |
"Steve Jacobs' elegantly disturbing film follows the exploits - or, more accurately, the exploitations - of 52-year-old professor David Lurie, a dissolute aesthete whose erudition does little to mask grotesque character flaws." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 6/10 |
Doubt (2008) |
"Doubt cast a long moral shadow on Broadway, but seems blunter on screen. Shanley's fussy directorial notions are less nuanced than the religious and moral arguments he's given his characters." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8/10 |
Earth (2009) |
"When a subject is as big as all outdoors, the big screen has some advantages." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 5/10 |
Easy Virtue (2009) |
"There's supposed to be some distance between the main character and the family she marries into — but that distance probably shouldn't include acting styles." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8/10 |
Every Little Step (2009) |
"A briskly self-aware, thoroughly stage-struck portrait ... of a show that itself is a stage-struck theatrical portrait." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7/10 |
Fanboys (2009) |
"You'd think the weakest link in Fanboys would be that it's all in-jokes, but they're actually not so 'in' that a casual fan won't get them." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7.5/10 |
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution (2009) |
"Rather than just putting you off your feed, this food documentary aims to point up a success story %u2014 a small French town called Barjac that went organic and thrived." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 3/10 |
Four Christmases (2008) |
"Gordon's stars are charmless, his script cheerless, and his sterling supporting cast can't seem to figure out what they've been brought on board to do." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8/10 |
Frost/Nixon (2008) |
"It wasn't really Frost who did Nixon in: It was Nixon's old nemesis, the TV camera — that unblinking eye, capturing every bead of perspiration, every nervous shift of posture ..." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7/10 |
Good (2008) |
"Good is pretty schematic — betraying its theatrical roots, perhaps. It's also a little drawn out. But it demonstrates the surprising power of character flaws in drama." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7/10 |
Good Hair (2009) |
"Part of the fun here is the way our narrator gets at complicated questions in his characteristically glib way. ... [But] real answers will have to be teased out elsewhere. Good Hair isn't selling anything but a good time." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 5/10 |
The Great Buck Howard (2009) |
"Any synopsis of The Great Buck Howard is going to make it sound more than a little like My Favorite Year. ... But that film had a compellingly poignant center." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8/10 |
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) |
"Poppy is upbeat — so relentlessly upbeat that it won't take long before you're wondering just how the director plans to wipe the smile off her face." |
Bob Mondello |
- |
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2004) |
"Kal Penn Trades Acting for Public Service" |
|
Tomato 7.5/10 |
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) |
"It's a more mature magic. ... Now subject to the same raging hormones as any other 16-year-olds, our spell-casting heroes are learning to brew love potions this year, with results mostly played for laughs." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7.5/10 |
Herb & Dorothy (2009) |
"Briskly and engagingly cinematic. ... [Their compulsive collecting seems] at once crazy, smart, generous and enormously endearing." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7.5/10 |
How About You (2008) |
"The material is familiar way past the point of cliche, but these folks are thoroughbreds — and they, if not the material, are irresistible." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8/10 |
Humpday (2009) |
"The film ends up being about not just a really idiotic dare, but about the bounds of friendship and the bonds of marriage — and about much more besides." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 9/10 |
The Hurt Locker (2009) |
"When it comes to getting an audience's attention, there's nothing quite like blowing up a major star within the first five minutes of a movie." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato |
I Sell the Dead (2009) |
"Its wit and style, however, are thoroughly modern, as is a hilarious ending that leaves the sequel door wide open. And why not?" |
Jeannette Catsoulis |
Tomato 7.5/10 |
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) |
"A sweet little comedy, both family-friendly and centered on a nontraditional family — and so suitable for pretty much everyone." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 9/10 |
In the Loop (2009) |
"Blistering satire ... scabrous laughs. And it's so easy to imagine that this really is how governments make earth-shaking decisions." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7/10 |
The International (2009) |
"Having made a bank their villain %u2014 a bank, mind you, not a banker %u2014 director Tom Tykwer and his screenwriters have pretty firmly captured the zeitgeist." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 7.5/10 |
Invictus (2009) |
"Loses steam in its last half-hour, but it has obvious virtues -- and it feels heartfelt, a generous elder's film about a generous elder's bequest to the world." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 4.5/10 |
Is Anybody There? (2009) |
"At once predictable and implausible; so overplotted and overpopulated that the question isn't so much Is Anybody There? as "Why on earth are so many bodies here?"" |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 5.5/10 |
The Lucky Ones (2008) |
"Director Neil Burger keeps things light, and the actors are more than engaging. ... But there's something centrally pat and predictable about the coincidence-laden story." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8.5/10 |
The Messenger (2009) |
"Messengers with the worst possible message, they nonetheless manage to be human and alive .... In a film that itself bears sad tidings about the costs of war, that is an affirming, even an inspiring, gift." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 9/10 |
Milk (2008) |
"Penn is so engaging, physically loose and just plain smart in the title role, he's bound to top everyone's shortlist come awards time." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 5.5/10 |
Miracle at St. Anna (2008) |
"Some themes are familiar, others freshly provocative. But nearly all get scattered as screenwriter James McBride lets the story drift off in six directions at once." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 5.5/10 |
Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) |
"Directors Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon push so hard for three-dimensionality that they basically have their animators putting sightlines before storylines." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 3.5/10 |
New in Town (2009) |
"Broad accents, broader slapstick and a willful shrinking from anything remotely original. ... Also much condescension, toward both the characters and the audience." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8.5/10 |
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) |
"[A]lmost more remarkable than Nick, Norah or their playlist ... is the quirky, melting-pot world Sollett creates around them: vibrant like New York, youthful like the stars, awkward like the characters they're playing..." |
Bob Mondello |
Splat 4.5/10 |
The Other End of the Line (2008) |
"It's not fair to ask that a romantic comedy be entirely realistic — but some level of plausibility would make the jokes go down easier, as would a touch of delicacy in the writing." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 8/10 |
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008) |
"Without their guns, the men prove surprisingly helpless. And when a [mediator] tells them that if they want the women to stop treating them like children, they must behave responsibly, you sense a corner has been turned." |
Bob Mondello |
Tomato 9/10 |
Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire (2009) |
"Daniels may be indulging in stunt casting, and slamming plot points home with sledgehammer subtlety, but the film's milieu and characters feel alarmingly real. And its story ends up packing an emotional wallop." |
Bob Mondello |
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